Knowing Our Ancestors

Like us, corn has ancestors too. The original being an ancient grass called teosinte. Not far from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Texcoco, Mexico, corn’s wild ancestor originated, far before even the Mayan or Aztec people integrated corn into their lifestyles. Far, far before some of our Anglo Saxon ancestors were feeding corn to hogs in their home countries, never considering it in the realm of human food. 

Around 9,000 years ago, teosinte was more like blades of prairie grass swaying in the wind compared to the cylindrical yellow hardened cones of genetic material with ancient origins it is today. It took thousands of years of human hands and intellect domesticating the plant into the plumper grain versions that evolved into the kernels that would be more recognized as corn to us in modern times.

What began as an intimate process of hand selection between humans and plants, has become the world of corn we see around us today in York County and across the Heartland. From a spiritual-like intimacy touching fingerprints to seed to select the best to the naked eye, to a data-driven system based around the technological financially-driven world we live today. 

Just over a century ago, in 1923, a young man named Henry Wallace was experimenting with cross-breeding and won the gold medal at the Iowa State Corn Yield Test with his "Copper Cross" hybrid. 

“This marked the first time in history that a hybrid variety outperformed traditional open-pollinated strains in an official scientific trial,” according to Iowa PBS. 

Just three years later, Wallace started Hi-Bred Corn Company (now Pioneer) to commercialize and market hybrid seeds to farmers.

My how things have changed. In 1926, while Wallace was launching his seed company, the United States had an estimated 6.4 to 6.5 million farms and a total U.S. population of about 117.4 million people. Today there are about 1,865,000 farms in America. The U.S. Census Bureau reports there are 342.6 million people in the nation today. 

Fewer farms and more corn. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) September crop production report forecasts the upcoming 2026 harvest at approximately 15.8 billion bushels. The United States produced an estimated 2,647,000,000 bushels of corn in 1926, primarily open-pollinated corn varieties instead of modern hybrids. Today, around 500 million bushels of corn are left behind at harvest, never leaving the field and considered waste by the industry. According to the National Corn Growers Association, it takes roughly 2.65 million to 2.86 million acres of land to grow 500 million bushels of corn, based on recent U.S. average corn yields.

Nearly three million acres of corn go nowhere near a hungry stomach and the USDA Economic Research Service reported in 2024 roughly 47.9 million people (about 1 in 7 Americans) lived in a food-insecure home. When considering the numbers, there appears to be room to improve things and we have the acres to turn things around. What if we would change just a small percentage of U.S. crop land on our own volition, not because of the impetus of government policy. What if we grew more actual food on a small portion of every farm? 

Several years ago I had the honor of being a small part of a Pawnee corn harvest at Ficke Cattle Company near Pleasant Dale, Neb. I touched the corn alongside what I now refer to as our Pawnee family and watched as our harvest grew around us in piles, nothing like the towering mounds of grain stored in grain bins and elevators across the country today. Grain that has its roots in that tender plant teosinte. 

At the indigenous corn harvest, I also watched a Pawnee woman I deeply respect cradle one of the ears of precious blue corn in her arms like a fragile infant.  Corn they went through hell and back to grow again in humble amounts by caring, committed growers across Nebraska. Let’s just say while the harvest was beautiful, I felt very small, like I needed to help far, far more. We have so much more to do to help one another. 

We cannot go back and make every wrong right. We cannot make everyone share. We can recognize what we can do to change this course of our current time and place in human history. We can keep learning. 

When Henry Wallace wanted to grow more corn in 1923, he wanted to see struggling farmers improve their lives and hungry people with more nourishment. 

Today, we have a different set of problems at hand and I think sometimes a very different motivation. Is it really still about ensuring we have a nutritiously dense food source and flourishing neighbors? I think it’s not always because we want our neighbors to have better lives. I think it oftentimes just comes down to money and a government gone awry. 

What we have now is the past to learn from. Agriculture is not better than it has ever been, it’s just different than it has ever been, like it has been over and over for generations. This cycle of agriculture’s history has more knowledge than ever before at its fingertips. What we need more than knowledge though, is wisdom and to feel the sustenance we are growing with our hands. If we feel our agricultural pursuits with our minds and hearts working in tandem, we will hearken the wisdom of our ancestors the world over. All of them, every race, creed, and culture needed to eat. 

We can improve upon what we do in agriculture by holding its future in our arms like a fragile infant. What care do we want to give our babies? We want to give them tender, committed, attentive care. If we treat our land, water, and each other like we nurture the most vulnerable among us, I know in my heart we can, and will, do better. 

Thanks to all our ancestors we are still breathing and have a chance to live today. I thank teosinte too and the hands that touched it a millennia ago. Perhaps we can touch and transform  agriculture’s future in a way that touches the past, and listens and learns from the land and each other. 

Copyright© 2026 All Rights Reserved, Kerry Hoffschneider